


Physics 413 - Circuits Lab

by AradialSymmetry



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3179696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AradialSymmetry/pseuds/AradialSymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade is a physics major in college, trying to deal with the pressure of academia and the exasperation of too many problem sets. One place she finds a bit of a reprieve is in her lab class - getting to do hands-on experiments is a change of pace, if nothing else. And having Aradia Megido as your lab partner would surely brighten up anyone's day!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Confection](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confection/gifts).



> Academic AUs where everyone is a physicist or mathematician are my weakness, so I had a lot of fun writing this! Hopefully it serves as a nice slice-of-life of one day of Jade's physics lab class in amongst her larger academic plans. Also, whether you want to interpret it as a humanstuck AU or a "trolls live alongside humans on Earth because I say so" AU left is up to the reader, you can go with whichever you prefer.

Jade groaned as she stared at the page of computations she'd scrawled out. "Don't tell me I set up the Lagrangian wrong in the first place!" she muttered to herself, crumpling up the paper and lobbing it towards the nearby recycle bin. She was about to grab a new sheet of paper and redo her scratchwork with the correct setup when she glanced at her phone and groaned again. How had time gone by that fast? It was already time for her next class - she'd have to wait until later to finish her classical mechanics homework here.

With a sigh, Jade collected her books and papers and shoved them into her bag. She took the lid off of the cup of coffee she'd been sipping at and gulped down the last bit of lukewarm liquid before tossing it away. Then she stood up and stretched for a moment before getting on her way, emerging from the depths of her university's physics library. 

Fortunately, the physics library was part of the physics building on campus, and as since Jade was a physics major she didn't have to venture too far to get to most of her classes. And this class in particular was just down a few flights of stairs from where she was. It was an upper-level lab class on electronic circuits - certainly an essential topic for an aspiring experimental physicist such as herself. And after banging her head against the heavy-duty theory of classical mechanics for the last few hours, Jade was looking forward to getting to actually fiddle around with things. 

Jade quickly made her way down to the lab and strode in. The room was filled with lab benches, and a quick glance around showed that maybe half of the students had trickled in already. Jade's bench was over in the corner, next to the window. She was unsurprised to see her lab partner there already - that girl could always be counted on to be on time. Aradia had her head down on the table, buried under her mass of hair, using her sweatshirt as a pillow. 

"Hey Aradia!" Jade said, feeling enthusiastic to greet her friend. Aradia yawned, then sat up and stretched out before turning to Jade with a wide grin. Jade couldn't help but grin back - Aradia's smiley enthusiasm was infectious. "Tired, huh?" 

"A bit! Terezi and I had our D&D night yesterday and that went pretty late!" Aradia responded excitedly, certainly not sounding tired at all. She stretched again and adjusted her hair a bit before continuing. "Oh man, it was really great, Terezi set us all up as allies with a horde of dragons fighting off some goblins and orcs. And then we played some video games for a while afterwards. Oh, and Jane brought a really great red velvet cake along, it was delicious."

"Hah, sounds like a good time," Jade said with a small smile. She liked going to Aradia and Terezi's apartment to play video games sometimes, though she had never really gotten into the tabletop roleplaying they did. "Though geez, I'm not sure how you guys get any work done! You always seem to have people over for D&D."

"Sheesh, we only do it twice a week," Aradia replied, still grinning widely. "You just have to get your work done early! And I mean, it's not like Terezi is going to let anything get in the way of her studying. She's gonna get her A's and ace the LSAT so she can get into Yale for law school, if she wasn't done with her studying she'd just call off the roleplaying for the night." 

"Yeah, yeah," Jade grumbled, thinking about her classical mechanics homework. The problem set was due tomorrow, and she still had a whole bunch of it left to do. She chastised herself for not being more studious and getting it started sooner. But that was because she'd been busy with her quantum mechanics homework before, and some other problem sets before that. "I guess this whole semester's just been kicking my ass." 

"Aww! It's sounded like you've been doing pretty well to me!" Aradia said, then turned to reach into her backpack. Jade had to admit that she was right - even if the work felt overwhelming sometimes, she'd managed to finish everything thus far, and still do well on her homework and exams. A moment later Aradia turned back, with the lab manual and her lab notebook in hand. "I was looking at today's lab before I came here! I think I figured out what we're supposed to do for the first part." 

Jade nodded, quickly taking her own lab books out and looking at what their assignment for today was. The first problem was to put together a small circuit that acted as an amplifier with certain behavior. Jade glanced over to Aradia's notebook to see that she'd already sketched out a diagram for what they should build. Jade pondered over how she'd do it, and started writing in her own notebook.

As Jade wrote, Aradia went ahead and started getting ready for their circuit-building for the day. In front of them was a set of small drawers containing a whole variety of tiny electronic components - resistors, capacitors, diodes, and more - and Aradia was already fishing through it for the ones she wanted. Their lab bench also had a decently-sized circuit board where they could arrange the components and connect them together, as well as a number of tools for measuring and testing things. Smiling and humming to herself, Aradia started doing the usual setup and calibration of their equipment.


	2. Chapter 2

"Ugh, man, what is even going on with this circuit?" Aradia groaned, fiddling with the options on the power supply. They were pretty sure they had assembled the latest circuit in that day's assignment correctly, but the screen of their oscilloscope that sat on the top shelf of their desk was just showing a line. Aradia fiddled with the connector leading from the scope - when she tested it on the input signal the screen lit up with an image of the square wave they were using, but when she moved it to the output it returned to just a flat line. Aradia pushed away from the bench and threw her head back in frustration. "What on earth is wrong with this, then? This is why I hate experimental stuff," she said with a pout.

"Hmm," Jade said, leaning in over the circuit. While Aradia got frustrated quickly with this sort of problem, Jade was much more willing to diagnose possible problems. Everything looked like it was attached in the right place, so Jade's experimentalist instinct was to check whether one of the components they were using was wrong or one of the connections wasn't being made. She disconnected the external power source and grabbed their multimeter, which was a handy gadget that she could use to make lots of measurements about electronic components. Jade moved the meter's two probes around and connected them to different parts of the circuit, checking whether various things that should have been connected together actually were, and things that shouldn't be weren't. When no obvious problem showed up there, she went on to the next thing in her mental checklist of things that could possibly be wrong. 

"I'm glad you have the patience to do that stuff," Aradia said, standing back and watching as Jade worked to pin down exactly where things in their circuit started going wrong. "This is why I could never do experimental physics. Theoretical physics, maybe, at least there if something's wrong it's because you screwed up, not because you started with equipment that's broken." 

"Oh, shush! Is this really that much worse than writing out pages and pages of calculations and then realizing you put a wrong sign somewhere? And aha, this has to be the issue. Our op-amp is busted," Jade said triumphantly, pulling out one of the components in their circuit. Aradia dug through the drawers to find a replacement, which Jade stuck in the correct place. Jade turned back to Aradia to continue her original thought. "And anyway, I thought you were thinking about grad school in archaeology? And wouldn't you be digging up, like, broken pots and things? That sounds a lot worse than dealing with a few little electronic components that don't work." 

"Well, yeah, I'm probably going to do archaeology. But I'm still considering theoretical physics. Well, a little bit, I mean - I am double-majoring so it would still be possible," Aradia said, reconnecting the power to their circuit and hooking up the oscilloscope again. This time, a different pattern flashed across the screen, one that looked more or less like what they were expecting. Aradia breathed a sigh of relief, then looked back at Jade. "And sheesh you make archaeology sound so boring! I mean yes there's broken pots sometimes, but they're what you want to study, not stuff to toss away. And it's so exciting to study ancient cultures and to get to find artifacts left over from them!" Aradia broke out into a grin from excitement about her favorite subject.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jade said, sticking out her tongue at her friend. "I'd still take physics over it any day. Even theoretical physics!" Meanwhile, Jade peered at her lab manual to see what they were supposed to do now that their circuit was working. There were a list of measurements they were supposed to make, but the first thing they were asked was to draw the waveform that the oscilloscope displayed and explain why it looked the way it did. Jade pulled out her lab book to do so. 

"Well that's just you! And that's why you wanna go to grad school in experimental physics," Aradia said, rolling her eyes but continuing to grin, even as she wrote in her own lab book. She stopped talking for a second to think over what she was writing before continuing their banter. "Anyway you're the one who's taking all of the theoretical physics classes this semester! I mean you're in advanced quantum mech with me but you're also doing classical mechanics." 

"Yeahhhh. Plus complex analysis. That's probably why I'm so frustrated with theoretical stuff now, I'm exhausted from all of the problem sets about it." Jade sighed, finishing up what she was writing and turning her attention back to their circuit. She glanced at the lab manual again. "So... Okay, step two is to to measure at what input voltage the behavior degenerates."

"Mhmm. Well, that's easy enough," Aradia reached over to the knob on their power supply that controlled the voltage. She slowly lowered it; for a while the oscilloscope's image of the output signal stayed the same, but suddenly it disappeared to a flat line again. Aradia fiddled with the knob until she hit the changeover point perfectly. "Aaand that's 2.16 volts." 

"Great. And then... Okay we need to change some of the resistors and test how that affects the circuit," Jade said, reading to herself as she wrote the previous measurement down. Aradia was already ahead of her, sifting through their drawers for the new resistors they needed. 

"Yep! Anyway, I hope your semester isn't too bad. I mean, I know you're loading up on the theoretical stuff this year so you have more time for research and experimental classes next year," Aradia said, fishing out one resistor and inspecting it closely before handing it to Jade to measure the resistance exactly. 

"Yeah. That and it's supposed to look good on grad school applications to have taken a bunch of this stuff already," Jade replied, looking down as she made the measurement they needed with the multimeter. "Okay... 4.13 kiloohms for that one. And anyway I still do like some theoretical stuff! Did you see that there's an astrophysics course they're going to offer next year? It looks sooooo cool!" 

"Ooh, I didn't! I'll have to check it out," Aradia said, writing down Jade's measurement and passing her the next resistor. "Though I dunno if I'll be able to fit it in my schedule, since I'll be taking classical mechanics then. And I hear that class is supposed to be really hard!" 

"Yeah, tell me about it!" Jade groaned. 

Aradia giggled in response. "It does sound pretty interesting, at least! I'm sure I'll be fine, anyway, since I can just ask you for help if I'm stuck on anything. I'm pretty sure you're the class genius in the physics department around here!" Aradia grinned widely again.

"Aww, well, if you say so!" Jade couldn't help but blush at the compliment as she leaned down to measure the second resistor Aradia had given her.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ooh, I think it's working now!" Aradia said excitedly as a low hum came from the small speaker in front of her. They were finally onto the last part of their assignment - after almost three hours in the lab - and Jade was more than ready to be done for the afternoon. Fortunately for her, Aradia was as energetic as ever, and had dragged them through doing the last part of the lab reasonably quickly. And Aradia kept the conversation going as well, which certainly helped stave off too much exasperation at how long they'd been there.

"Oh, nice!" Jade perked up. The last circuit they had to build was an amplifier that operated a speaker. Knowing they were almost done, Aradia and Jade had assembled it quickly, and after a few minor fixes they had been able to get the speaker to make some noise. 

"Alright, I guess we can test it then!" Aradia shuffled over to the computer in the middle of the lab room with their circuit board. It had its audio output connected to a makeshift adapter that the TA had put together, which Aradia hooked up to the appropriate place on the circuit. She pressed play, and a tinny rendition of the Super Mario theme emerged from their speaker. 

"Awesome! So then we're done!" Jade replied, jotting down a few concluding sentences in her lab book. She then grabbed some of the spare resistors and wires and things that were laying on their lab bench and started to return them to their proper drawers. "Just gotta put this stuff away and then we can get out of here!" 

"Yep!" Aradia replied cheerily, returning to their bench and disassembling the circuit. "I can finish putting this away if you want to leave, you seem like you really want to get going."

"Thanks! And yeah, I guess so," Jade was happy to take Aradia up on her offer. She enjoyed these labs, but they lasted for three hours so by the end she was always antsy to leave. And today she had her mechanics homework on the back of her mind, plus an increasing growl in her stomach. "Man, I'm hungry! I'm gonna run over to the dining hall and get some dinner. And then get back to the library to finish that problem set." 

"Alright! See you," Aradia waved as her partner zipped up her backpack and headed out of the door. Jade rushed down the stairs and emerged from the building, only then pausing to stretch out and take in the brisk breeze and the setting sun. She inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times to relax herself a bit - she loved physics in general, even if some days it could really test her patience. But the lab work tended to bring out her enthusiasm in the subject, so despite being a bit tired now from her long afternoon, after a break for dinner she was sure she'd be reinvigorated to finish her work.


End file.
